Monday, October 5, 2009


AEG Buys Webcasting Firm
Los Angeles-based AEG, which is a producer of music, sports, reality and special event programming, said Monday that it has acquired Incited Media, a provider of webcast management, production and media services. Financial terms of the acquisition were not disclosed. Incited Media has produced online events such as The Democratic National Convention, Live Earth, Live 8 and YouTube Live. AEG is one of the largest promoters of concerts and other live events in the world.
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Rubicon Project Plans Major Technology Upgrade
Santa Monica-based Rubicon Project, the online ad network optimization firm headed by Frank Addante, is planning a major technology upgrade Wednesday. According to a note sent to its publishers, the firm is unveiling a technology it is calling REVV for Publishers Wednesday. The company said that the new technology--which the company described as "new technology from the ground up"--is engineered to "accelerate revenue" for the Web's largest publishers. No details on the exact upgrades to the ser (More info...)
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Hydra, CitizenHawk Link To Battle Cybersquatters
Beverly Hills-based Hydra, an operator of a cost-per-action (CPA) advertising network, said today that it has linked with Aliso Viejo-based CitizenHawk, a provider of trademark protection and domain name services. According to the firms, the deal calls for CitizenHawk to offer "domain recovery services" to Hydra advertisers. CitizenHawk helps companies identify cybersquatters and others using brand trademarks, and recovers those domains for those brands, including going through all of the proced (More info...)
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Calacanis Takes On Keiretsu Forum On Fees
Jason Calacanis, CEO of Santa Monica-based Mahalo.com and co-producer of the TechCrunch50 conference--not known for pulling his punches--publicly targeted angel group The Keiretsu Forum today for their presentation fees. According to Calacanis, he's on a campaign to "destroy" the angel group, saying that the group has been taking advantage of startup companies by charging them $4,000 to $6,000 to present to angel investors. The effort highlights and ongoing debate between angel groups who do not (More info...)
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MySpace Names CFO
Los Angeles-based social networking site MySpace said today that it has named Mark Rosenbaum as its Chief Financial Officer. Rosenbaum was most recently a consultant to MGM, and was previously SVP Corporate Finance at Gemstar-TV Guide. He has also served at SmartJog S.A., and at positions at Twentieth Century Fox and Walt Disney. Rosenbaum reports to Owen Van Natta.
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Achates Power Gets $12.1M
San Diego-based Achates Power, a firm developing clean diesel engine technology, has raised $12.1M in a $20M funding round, according to a regulatory filing by the firm today. Details on the funding haven't been released, however, the firm's backers include Sequoia Capital, Madrone Capital Partners, Rockport Capital Partners, and InterWest Partners. Achates describes its engine technology as providing both better fuel efficiency and power density than comparably sized engines.
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Kingston Taps Firm For Encryption Technology
Kingston Digital, the flash memory arm of Fountain Valley-based Kingston Technology, said today that it has tapped partner SPYRUS for encryption technology for a line of USB flash drives. Kingston said that it will use technology from SPYRUS, covering hardware-based encryption technology for flash drives, into its line of DataTravler USB drives, specifically for use by the government and enterprise customers. Financial details of the link was not disclosed. Kingston said new produts using the te (More info...)
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Qualcomm Names QPrize Finalists
San Diego-based Qualcomm announced the finalists for the firm's business plan competition, with four early stage companies spread across Europe/Israel, China, India, and North America. The finalists have each received $100,000, and are cmpeting for an additional $150,000 in funding. The finalist in Europe/Israel was Panoramic POwer, a developer of wireless sensor products; in China, Cooktek, a develope rof a user interface for mobile touchscreen devices; in India, Capillary Technologies, a devel (More info...)
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SoCal Tech Moguls Make Richest Americans List
A few of Southern California's technology moguls managed to stake out to a spot in the Forbes 400 Richest Americans list, which was released recently by Forbes Magazine. According to the list, Patrick Soon-Shiong of Abraxis Bioscience was number 65, with $4.0B in assets, followed by David Sun and John Tu, the founders of Kingston Technology tied at 123 with $2.5B each; Jack Dangermond, founder of map software maker ESRI, was at 158, with $2B. Broadcom's Henri Samueli appeared down at position 21 (More info...)
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Qualcomm, Adobe Team On Mobile Flash Player
San Diego-based Qualcomm and Adobe said today that the two have teamed up to create an optimized Flash player for mobile devices. According to the firms, they are working together to "dramatically increase" performance for Adobe Flash Player 10.1 for Qualcomm's chipsets running on smart phones and smartbook computers. The collaboration is through the Open Screen Project, an effort to deliver a Flash runtime for mobile devices. The firms said the performance boost comes from the use of a graphica (More info...)
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Kyriba Claims Gains
San Diego-based Kyriba, a developer of software-as-a-service for cash and treasury management, claimed today that it has "strong" results for the third quarter. The privately held firm did not disclose any actual financials. The firm claimed that the firm's business has been driven by the difficult economic environment, which makes companies to look into greater visibility of their cash and liquidity. Kybriba said that it added 50 clients in the first nine months of the year, and had an increase (More info...)
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Passenger Self-Service Community Software
Los Angeles-based Passenger, a developer of software used by brands to run online communities for their customers, announced today that it has released a new version of its platform. According to the company, it has expanded its product to allow agencies to build and manage their own communities using its software. Previously, Passenger provided full-service development of those communities. Passenger's software allows brands to develop communities with discussion boards, surveys, and polls. The (More info...)
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Conexant Rolls Video Reference Design
Newport Beach-based semiconductor provider Conexant Systems reported today that it has rolled out a reference design for video frame grabbers. According to Conexant, the new design enables manufacturers to develop devices to capture and transfer analog videos from camcorders and VCRS. Conexant said the design, based on its CX23102 audio/video decoder and CX23417 A/V encoder, has been adopted by an unnamed, Chinese consumer video electronics manufacturer. However, the firm did not say what the fi (More info...)
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